Burma

Chloe Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd March 2016 Westminster Hall

[Chloe Smith (Norwich North) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz). I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) on securing this debate, which allows us, like the hon. Lady, to celebrate this opportunity, to express our hopes and to talk about how we can help that extraordinary country with its challenges.

I want to talk about the work that I was part of in February at the behest of the United Nations Development Programme and the Inter-Parliamentary Union, in association with various Departments and UK Aid. The hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith), my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) and I were led by Meg Munn, a former Member. We were part of a multinational, cross-party group of MPs from the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Hong Kong and elsewhere, which helped to train the newly elected MPs in Myanmar.

The challenge of working with a military quota in that Parliament has already been mentioned, but I want to offer some optimism based on what I saw of MPs of all parties. There is a wide range of parties, given the ethnic situation, but I hope that they will be willing and able to work with each other across those divides. It will be new for them, but, as has already been said, the situation in Myanmar is almost entirely new. Although it is the second Hluttaw, or Parliament, in official terms, this is the first opportunity they have had to work together constructively, and we wish them all luck with that. We helped them to develop the skills they need to do that. We chose the themes of scrutiny, accountability and representation, which are bread and butter to us—we are very grateful for that. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam said, we have the privilege to take our places in an established democracy. It is an entirely different situation in Myanmar. I was glad to help those MPs to develop the skills that they require to perform their work.

Our training took place over a week and was delivered to about 400 MPs—that is, most of the MPs in Myanmar. As anybody who has done professional training knows, it is hard to train 400 people in any context. We had a blend of plenary work and speeches on the chosen themes, and we used examples from the countries represented in the delegation. To echo what the hon. Member for Walsall South said, we did not try to tell them how to do it. Instead, we offered examples of how we have seen it done in our countries. We supplemented the plenary sessions with a workshop approach. Each international facilitator worked with about 40 Myanmar MPs, which allowed us to go into a level of detail that was inspiring to me and everyone else involved. I hope it was constructive and detailed enough to encourage the Myanmar MPs to begin to think about how to apply those techniques.

We went into detail on subjects such as how a parliamentary question should be put and how constituency matters should be run, which is a brand new concept for many of those MPs. There will be some logistical challenges, but we gave them some ideas about how they can structure that work. We drew heavily on resources that are typically found in Parliaments. It is important that this Parliament continues to provide that support. The Clerks have already been mentioned, and the Library service is sharing skills, techniques and resources in a way that I hope will allow that fledgling democracy to take root.

During that week, we received a warm welcome from the Myanmar people—from the MPs and from the translators and interpreters, who were passionately keen to see the project succeed. They were touched by the friendship of other countries. They are all involved in that project. I hope that people outside those parliamentary circles will be able to draw on that friendship and support in the knowledge that others are looking at Burma and wishing it well. I hope they will be able to draw on that in the years to come.

There is great diversity and strength among that group of MPs. I am sure it will be the foundation of a thriving democracy if they can apply those skills to the country’s many policy challenges. Among the group were men and women. There are some very impressive new women MPs, who knew what they had to contribute, and young MPs. As the chair of the all-party group on youth affairs, I was keen to share my thoughts with them about how they can inspire young democrats in their country.

I am grateful to have had the chance to put on the record my reflections on that work. I hope to help the cross-party spirit in this Chamber to do more in the future.